For most Americans, online voting remains as much a part of the future as a personal aircraft in the style of The Jetsons. “Coming up with electronic mechanisms to vote, where we know the votes are correct from beginning to end, there’s just nothing available,” says Gene Spafford, professor of computer science and executive director […]
For a generation, Indiana has consistently ranked in the bottom 10 states in terms of voter turnout. Ann and Bill (A’74) Moreau are working to change that. As co-founders of Indiana Citizen — a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization dedicated to increasing registered voters — they helped launch a new campaign called One More Voice. How […]
Traditionally, Purdue’s campus has been less involved in elections than other Big Ten schools. But with students getting involved in local politics after West Lafayette annexed Purdue’s campus, an uptick in participation in 2018, and the University’s commitment to on-campus learning this fall, that could be about to change. The year 2008 was a big […]
Iowa: Making Politics Personal Again Connie Doebele knew she had made the right choice to join the team at C-SPAN after a phone call came in from Hanover, Kansas — a short drive from her hometown. “Brian Lamb (LA’63) was interviewing the publisher of the New York Times, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and Howell Raines, the […]
When Donald Spencer (S’18, LA’18) left his hometown of Brownsburg, Indiana, for college, a life in politics wasn’t on his radar. He started school with the intent of following a premed track and becoming a doctor. Then, when West Lafayette annexed Purdue’s campus, Spencer took another look at politics, seeing the chance to run for […]
Abigail Spanberger’s approach to politics is simple: ask questions, get answers, create solutions. When Abigail Spanberger (MS M’02) ran for Virginia’s seventh Congressional district in 2018, you probably wouldn’t have put money on her chances. Republicans held the seat for nearly 40 years. Its election outcomes were predictable. If you heard mention of it, it […]
Judd Choate (M LA’94, PhD LA’97) talks about the logistics of voting during apandemic, how to spot bad information on the web, and what it was like to lead the US response to Russian interference in the 2016 election Fifteen minutes before our Wednesday morning interview was due to start, I got a text. “Hi, […]
A trail forged for the people When Jim Baird (A’67) decided to run for Congress in 2017, filling his father’s seat in the Indiana General Assembly wasn’t on Beau Baird’s (HHS’04, MBA’18) radar. But having worked in the background of his father’s campaigns, the younger Baird became intrigued by the possibility of being able […]
Kathryn Cramer Brownell, assistant professor of history, helps interpret nearly a century of political back-and-forth played out from the radio waves to the Twittersphere. Brownell is the author of Showbiz Politics: Hollywood in AmericanPolitical Life. Here are four quick takeaways from her research. The Copycat Effect If a party loses an election, they study their […]
Suzanne Crouch reflects on the values that led her to politics and talks about humility and history 100 years after the passage of the 19th amendment Suzanne Crouch (LA’75) arrived in West Lafayette as a sophomore, having spent her freshman year at the University of Southern Indiana. “My father insisted we spend our freshman year […]
